The Dark Elixir Drill comes along with the TH7 upgrade. It allows you to collect Dark Elixir (also known as DE to everyone in the game) from your own village without having to go and attack other villages for it. DE is the most valuable resource in CoC and should always be protected, even the drills. Dark Elixir is used to build Dark Elixir troops like the Hog Rider or Valkyrie and it is also used to upgrade the same Dark Elixir troops in addition to the upgrades to the Barbarian King and Archer Queen. You get 1 Dark Elixir Drill in TH7, another in TH9 and the 3rd in TH10 to give you a total of three once you have made it to TH10.

​

       Most Players that are still upgrading their troops will place the DE Storage in or near the center of the village. Maxed players will use the DE Storage as another high hit point shielding structure and place high valued defenses behind it. The DE Drills do not have nearly as many HP as it's storage but many maxed players will also use the DE Drills as a shield because they do have more HP than the Gold and Elixir collectors. Non-maxed players that still need to use the Dark Elixir need to protect the drills. Many players will place the other collectors on the outer edge of their village or even on the outside of the walls but I would strongly discourage leaving the DE Drills outside the Walls. Players looking for good bases to raid will almost always look to see where the DE Drills are and if yours are exposed and easily accessible then your base will get raided more than it might get raided if the DE Drills we behind a couple of layers of walls. So moral of this story, protect the DE Storages and Drills!

​

       When raiding other villages the DE Storages and DE Drills should be one of the 1st structures you look for. There is a glass looking tube on the top side of the DE Drill that looks empty if the drill has under 20% of its capacity in it and the tube looks full if there is over 60% of its capacity in it. Maxed DE Drills can hold an enormous amount of Dark Elixir in it and attackers can steal up to 75% of whatever is inside of them so be sure to come onto you village and empty them as often as possible. If you encounter a base with 5-7K DE available to you if you 3 star the base, that will indicate that there is alot of DE inside the drills for you to empty out of the drills. 

​

       You can Boost the Dark Elixir Drills production with the use of GEMS. You are allowed to double the rate of production by making a small gem investment on each individual drill. The BOOST will last or 24 hours.

       To summarize the Dark Elixir Drills, they are extremely important because the pump the most valuable substance in the game into their glass tube on top of the drill. Players should empty the DE Drills as often as possible to prevent other players from coming onto their base and having a huge DE payday. DE Drills have fairly high HP and can be used as shields in war or on maxed bases where the DE is only used to MAKE the DE Troops NOT upgrade them. DE Drill should be protected at the same level as you would the Elixir Storage or the Gold Storage due to the high value of the Dark Elixir. Last notable suggestion is to always separate the DE Drills. Make it as hard as possible for players to come onto your base and take out more than 1 DE Drill. (remember players that are dropping trophies love to use their Archer Queen, drop her on the map next to a DE Drill that someone left exposed and take the DE from it and quit. They get to drop trophies and collect 100-1500 Dark Elixir that war!